The jinniyeh, meanwhile, flew about the tiny room, trying to shake her sense of confinement. It astonished her how humans seemed to hate open spaces. They built their buildings and then put rooms in them, and then trunks inside the rooms, and cases inside the trunks.
She approached the window, blowing the thin curtains to the side. Outside, the twilight was deepening toward evening. She heard the growl she now knew to be an automobile, and the ring of hooves upon stone. Beyond were treetops, a space cleared of buildings—and in the middle of that space—
An enormous arch, bone-white, rising into the air.
She shot backward. The Cursed City, it was here! But how was that possible? Had it followed her somehow, were the demons real after all? Or—had she truly left the desert? Sophia had kept her in so many boxes; she’d never seen any proof of their destination, had merely trusted the woman’s word—
Terrified, she raised winds to flee. The curtains whipped about, tangling her inside them.
“Dima!”
Sophia stood dripping wet, a towel hastily wrapped around herself, one hand shielding her eyes from the wind that spun through the room.
The jinniyeh took form; the winds stopped. “You tricked me! We are still in the Cursed City!” She advanced upon the woman, fury in her eyes.
“What?” Startled, Sophia looked to the window. “Wait—the Arch?”
“Yes!”
The woman put up her hands. “Dima, please! Look again. It’s not Palmyra. It’s not the same.”
Was this a trick, too? The jinniyeh glared at her, but went back to the window—and saw that the woman was right. This arch wasn’t old and crumbling, but new and whole. Carvings decorated its sides, undamaged by time.
“I should’ve thought to warn you,” Sophia said. “That’s Washington Square Arch. It’s only a hundred years old.”
The jinniyeh stared at it. “But . . . it’s so alike.”
“It’s in the Roman style, just as Palmyra was. Here—wait a moment, I’ll show you something.” She replaced the towel with a dressing-gown from her trunk, then dug through her valise and found a rectangle of paper that she unfolded once, then again and again, until it was nearly too large to hold. She placed it upon the bed. “It’s a map of Manhattan,” she said. “Like the railway map I showed you in Damascus, but only one city, and in much greater detail. We’re here, in Greenwich Village, on Waverly Place.”
The jinniyeh squinted. There was Waverly Place, at the edge of a small box labeled Washington Square Park. Inside the box, the map’s creator had sketched the outline of a miniature arch. She glanced out the window to the real thing, towering above the trees.
“I want to see for myself,” she said.
Sophia considered this, and then nodded. “Of course.” She unlatched the window and raised the sash. “Go ahead.”
The jinniyeh was startled. Did Sophia trust her that much, to encourage her to fly free into the city? No: she trusted the promise that she had made. The vow upon Mount Qaf.
The breeze from the window smelled of green leaves and burning wood, and the dark, oily scent of human machinery. Not the desert at all. With a wary glance at Sophia, she loosed her form and flew out into the dusk.
Downstairs, the hotel was preparing for the evening. The scents of asparagus soup and roast beef drifted into the lobby, reminding the desk-clerk that he wouldn’t have anything to eat until the restaurant closed for the night and the cooks served what was left to the staff. He glanced at the clock, and then behind himself at the grid of cubbyholes, one for each room, keys dangling from the hooks of those guests who’d gone out on the town. Soon they’d drift back and reclaim their keys, and find that in their absence their rooms had grown too warm, or perhaps too cold. They’d demand a seating at the restaurant five minutes before the kitchen closed; they’d ask about nearby entertainments, and then go to exactly the same pictures they could see at home. The clerk despised the evening shift. He wished he had a newspaper, or a sandwich.
The lobby door opened. It was a Western Union boy, an oyster-pail in one hand. The boy walked to the desk, set down the pail, and pulled an envelope from his bag. “Day letter for Sophia Williams,” he said, sliding it across.
The clerk took the envelope and peered at it, and then at the hotel register. Williams, Williams . . . The pail distracted him with its scent. Here she was—Williams, Room 812. He slid the envelope into the cubby for 812; and when he turned back, the boy said, “Say, do you like chop suey?”
“Sure I do. Why?”
The boy nodded at the pail. “I went to Pell Street to get this for a lady, but when I came back, she didn’t want it anymore. So now I’m stuck with it.”
“You ain’t gonna eat it?”
“Naw, I still got deliveries to make, and it’ll be cold by the time I’m done. I can’t stand the stuff cold. You want it?”
The clerk considered the pail. He looked at the clock. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Anytime. Hey—you got a toilet around here?”
He pointed. “Down the hall, past the restaurant.”
The boy thanked him, and left in the direction of the W.C.—and the clerk, his stomach growling, took the oyster-pail to the back office and shut the door.
The Arch was closer than the jinniyeh had realized.
It stood upon an open oval of hard ground, surrounded by foot-paths. Startled pigeons scattered from its carvings as she flew closer, examining the marble. Then she pulled back, gazing out beyond the park’s edges. There were no fallen columns here, no foothills in the distance, only a profusion of tall, rectangular towers dotted with glass, so many that she couldn’t see the
